Thursday, June 22,
2000

Texas announces
new spill penalties
Texas Land Commissioner David Dewhurst today announced revised
penalty guidelines for oil spills in Texas coastal waters. Beginning
August 1, spills less than a gallon will draw fines of $250.
Larger spills will draw fines up to $500 plus $250 per barrel
of oil spilled. Penalties for failure to report a spill will
range from $500 to $25,000 per day.

According to Dewhurst, more than 1,200
oil spills were reported in Texas waters last year. "Most
of these were accidents," her said,."caused by the
absence of established commonsense procedures, adequate training,
or due caution. Many companies were responsible for multiple
spills, all of which were easily preventable."

The new guidelines are posted on the Land
Office web site, www.glo.state.tx.us/oilspill,
The guidelines were developed by a task force made up of
industry representatives, environmental groups, and GLO staff.
"A number of oil transporters who are conscientious about
handling oil and reporting spills have said privately that the
penalties will help level the playing field with operators who
have been less than conscientious," Dewhurst said.

The new scheme also includes incentives.
Companies with a "Sound Management Practice Program"
will receive reduced assessments when spills occur. "This
is not about making money for the state," Dewhurst said.
"It's about protecting our beaches, bays, wetlands, and
aquatic life. After an appropriate interval we'll sit down with
the stakeholders and see how we're doing and what else, if anything,
needs to be done."

Under Texas law, oil spills in Texas coastal
waters must be reported to the General Land Office. Federal law
requires reporting maritime spills to the Coast Guard.

The Land Office operates the state's oil
spill prevention response program created by the 1991 Oil Spill
Prevention and Response Act. The 56-person staff includes 43
response officers and support staff in five field offices along
the coast. The program is paid for by a two-cent per barrel fee
on out-of-state oil entering Texas.

EPA continues crackdown
on Alaska cruise shipsToday's Anchorage
Daily News reports that the federal EPA has been conducting
surprise inspections of cruise ship emissions and found that
smoke spewing from the stacks of four cruise ships docked in
Juneau appeared to be in violation of federal and state air pollution
limits.

"Each ship was informed that their
smoke was in excess of what is allowed by the state air quality
(law) and the federal Clean Air Act," said John Pavitt,
Alaska air quality coordinator for the federal Environmental
Protection Agency, according to the Daily News.

The paper quotes Pavitt as saying that
the results from the June 10-12 inspections will be reviewed
by the EPA's Seattle regional office, which will determine whether
air pollution violations occurred and whether to issue citations.

Pavitt told the newspaper he would not
name the cruise ships, because the data is still being reviewed,
but he did say that all four of the ships were owned by companies
that were cited by the EPA last February for air quality violations
during the summer of 1999.

Pavitt, who conducted the inspections that
led to the February citations, said the amount of smoke observed
coming from the ships in the recent checks was "very similar"
to the levels that were determined to be violations.

Pavitt is one of the agency's specially
trained "smoke readers," who must be recertified every
six months. They are trained to judge the opacity of air pollution
while the ships are in various positions.

The smoke reader determines the opacity
by measuring over time the percentage of landscape that can be
seen through the smoke with the naked eye. If nothing can be
seen, opacity is considered to be 100 percent. If everything
is visible, opacity is zero.

Pavitt said he measured the ships' emissions
both while they were in port and during movement to or from the
dock.

During the same three days of the June
inspection, the EPA received complaints from the public saying
the ships at the docks in Juneau were creating a lot of smoke,
Pavitt said.

FGH
stock offering will raise $69.7 million
Friede Goldman Halter, Inc. has placed an offering, on a firm
commitment, underwritten basis, of 8.75 million shares of its
common stock at a price of $8.25 per share. The offering will
generate $69.7 million in net proceeds to the company. It will
be underwritten by RBC Dominion Securities Corporation as lead
manager and Jefferies & Company, Inc. as co-manager.

Frontline in $48.5 million
private placement
The board of Frontline has approved a private placement of $48.5
million in equity to a limited number of leading international
financial institutions. A total of 4 million shares were issued
at NOK 104.50 per share.

The transaction was successfully placed
by Fearnley Fonds ASA and Alfred Berg. Part of the proceeds from
the private placement will be used to finance the equity investment
in the two Suezmaxes Frontline recently bought from Euronav.
The remaining part of the proceeds will be used to fund further
acquisitions in the modern Suezmax and VLCC market.

Chairman John Fredriksen said: "The
strengthening of Frontline's equity combined with the strong
operating cashflow we are currently enjoying, puts Frontline
in an excellent position to continue to be the driving force
in the consolidation of the tanker market. The success of Tankers
International and Alliance Chartering confirm that we are on
the right track.

"We see several interesting investment
opportunities in today's market. Opportunities which would strengthen
Frontline's market position further and, most importantly, give
a good financial return to our shareholders."

Hampton
Roads repairers team to pursue Navy business
Today's Virginian-Pilot reports that he two largest private shipyards
in South Hampton Roads have agreed to team up to pursue the larger
Navy ship overhauls that they have been unable to compete for
on their own.

Norshipco and Metro Machine Corp. announced
the teaming agreement Wednesday.

The two Norfolk-based firms will remain
independent and will still compete against each other for other
Navy ship repair jobs not covered by their teaming arrangement,
says the paper.

The target of the teaming arrangement is
the Navy's plan to begin modernizing its 27 Ticonderoga-class
guided missile cruisers beginning in 2003. While it's not yet
clear if the Navy will elect to modernize all 27 warships, each
job will be extensive, lasting up to a year.

The teaming will help the two yards compete
against yards such as Ingalls Shipbuilding of Mississippi and
Bath Iron Works of Maine, both of which built the cruisers, and,
perhaps, Newport News Shipbuilding.

"This work is going to be large and
complex and might be judged beyond the capability of either one
of us individually,'' the newspaper quotes Richard Goldbach,
Metro Machine's president, as saying. "By combining we increase
our chances of that work being done by us.''

The teaming arrangement, says the newspaper,
will also allow more effective and efficient use of the two shipyards'
big drydocks, Norshipco's Titan and Metro Machine's Old Dominion,
which is currently being repaired in Romania and is scheduled
to be back in Norfolk by October. The goal is to put cruiser
modification work into the Old Dominion, freeing up the Titan
to pursue the large amphibious ships and commercial work such
as cruise ships and oil tankers.

While many details remain to be worked
out, the arrangement calls for Norshipco to serve as the lead
contractor with Metro Machine as a subcontractor.

Swedish stealth corvette
launched
Vericor Power Systems announced that the first Swedish Navy Visby-class
stealth corvette was recently launched powered by four TF50A
marine aeroderivative gas turbines in a Combined Diesel Or Gas
(CODOG) turbine configuration.
Vericor Power Systems provided the TF50A propulsion packages
that are used as the main propulsion system along with two MTU
16V 2000 N90 diesel engines. Honeywell Engines and Systems in
Phoenix, Ariz., manufactured the TF50A gas turbines.

The Visby corvette, also known as the YS
2000 series, was designed and built by Kockums AB at the Karlskrona
Shipyard in Sweden. Kockums AB currently has a total of six Visby-class
corvettes on order. These are the first stealth vessels in series
production.

Vericor Power Systems is a joint company of Honeywell, USA and
MTU München, Germany. The company is headquartered near
Atlanta, Ga. Vericor Power Systems markets, sells and supports
gas turbines, packages and complete turnkey solutions for worldwide
cogeneration, mechanical drive and marine propulsion applications
in the range from 0.5 to 50 megawatts. Visit Vericor Power Systems
on the worldwide web at www.vericor.com